Longtime UNLV educator, civic leader Cassese dies

Friday, March 3, 2000 | 11:42 a.m.

To Tom Cassese, students always came first.

Whether teaching and counseling junior high and high schoolers in Massachusetts in the 1960s or helping UNLV graduates get good jobs as a vocational counselor for nine years in the 1980s and '90s, he left an indelible mark on thousands of students.

In the mid-1980s Cassese was more than happy to step down from his three-year stint as chairman of UNLV's Department of Educational Foundations and Counseling to accept what seemed at the time the lesser post of director of student services.

"Some people may feel my position change is something of a demotion," Cassese said at the time. "But, in taking this assignment, it seemed an opportunity to get back with the undergraduate kids. I felt I was losing touch with them being an administrator.

"Today, teaching is merely a job to most teachers. They are more concerned with working hours and fringe benefits than being with the kids. This doesn't seem to be important today. But it is to me."

Thomas Michael Cassese, a longtime officer in the Las Vegas Uptown Kiwanis Club and the author of Nevada's acupuncture licensing exam, died Saturday in Las Vegas. His family declined to release his age, Palm Mortuary said. However, a 1990 news account listing his age indicates Cassese possibly was 66 at the time of his death.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 32 years will be noon Saturday at the Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer, 55 E. Reno Ave. A rosary will be said at 11 a.m.

"Tom was here so long he became a fixture on campus," said UNLV spokesman Tom Flagg, a friend. "He meant a lot to the university and the students. He was the interface between employers and students, and he helped many students get good jobs and careers."

Cassese, who was named several times Kiwanian of the year, held the distinction of being the father of the first woman to serve as president of a Nevada Kiwanis Club.

In 1990 three years after women were allowed to join the previously men-only organization, Dona Cassese-Caccia was elected president of the Uptown Club. Tom was president of the same organization in 1974-75 and served as its secretary for 25 years.

A longtime avid supporter of the medical benefits of acupuncture, Cassese at one point had the only acupuncture licensing exam in the United States that was written in four languages -- English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Cassese was asked by the Nevada State Board of Chinese Medicine to write the state's test for acupuncture licensing.

He lectured at the World Academic Society of Acupuncture Congress in Philadelphia in 1974 and in Montreal in 1975, and each time was awarded a medal for the testing programs he created.

Born in Massachusetts, Cassese early on had an interest in dentistry and attended Holy Cross University in Worcester as a premed student. He left school and joined the Marines.

Although he had no prior training as a journalist, Cassese was made a correspondent for the Marine Corps. He had his own television show and, in the mid-1950s, wrote for the Miami Herald, Miami News and Leatherneck Magazine.

Cassese earned a bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Miami in 1958, a master's in education and counseling from Boston University in 1961 and a doctorate in education from the University of Miami in 1968.

Cassese and his wife of 41 years, the former Louise Hall, settled in Weymouth, Mass., in the late 1950s, where he taught junior high school in nearby Hanover in 1959 and in Weymouth in 1960. Three years later he took a student counseling post at Randolph (Mass.) High School.

Cassese came to UNLV in 1969 as a professor, and during his 27 years at the school served as chairman of the Department of Education, vice president of student services and academic counselor in the College of Business and Economics. He retired in 1996 as emeritus professor of education.

A civic leader, Cassese also was a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Charter Grand Knight for the St. Jude's Council at Our Lady of Las Vegas Catholic Church, a member of the Marine Corps League and a member of the board of directors for Angel Plane.

In addition to his wife and daughter, both of Las Vegas, Cassese is survived by a son, Michael Cassese of Tucson, Ariz.; another daughter, Lynn Cassese of Las Vegas; and three grandchildren.